E-Mail Message Blitz Creates What May Be Fastest Fad Ever

By SAUL HANSELL

Published: June 9, 2003

LAKE FOREST, Ill., June 4 — As he tapped out an e-mail message early one Monday morning in April, Zac Brandenberg had no idea the kind of success he would achieve. At 2:30 a.m. he pushed a button on his keyboard, sending two million copies of the message scampering across the Internet imploring their recipients to "Get the `Iraqi Most Wanted' Deck of Cards!"

The Friday before, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks had announced that the Defense Intelligence Agency had created a deck of playing cards with the names and photos of 55 Iraqi leaders for distribution to border guards. The Defense Department put the images of the cards on its Web site, spurring Mr. Brandenberg's company, JDR Media, and many others to race to get reproductions of the cards to market.

By 2:35 a.m., the first order came back for four decks at $5.95 each. "At that point, I knew we would be successful and I went to bed," Mr. Brandenberg said.

Hundreds of millions of e-mail messages about the cards have been sent since, and some 1.5 million decks have been sold by GreatUSAflags.com, a Web site owned by JDR, based in Los Angeles, and its partner, Lionstone International, which is based here. Other companies have sold a total of more than one million decks, making the Iraqi cards one of the fastest-selling fad products in history.

Just as the Iraqi war showed off the power and speed of America's high-tech weapons, the marketing of the Iraqi cards showed the ability of the Internet and e-mail to promote a product with overwhelming force.

Once it was clear that the product would sell, Mr. Brandenberg dashed off e-mail messages to his contacts at other Internet marketing companies. They, in turn, brought in more affiliates.

In total, some 1,500 separate companies sold GreatUSA's cards online. Some were better-known companies, like SportsLine .com, and others were tiny operations, like WeLoveTheIraqiInformationMinister .com, an impromptu that was site set up to chronicle the improbable bravado of former Iraqi Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf. Since GreatUSA paid these companies only if they made sales, it had enormous reach with almost no marketing expenditure.

"It is mind-blowing, when you sit back and think that in the course of the month you could sell one million decks of cards without planning to do so," said Edward Jack, a partner in Lionstone. "Without e-mail, this would never have happened."

The Iraqi cards certainly were not the biggest fad to hit the country, but they may well have been the fastest. In the summer of 1957, Wham-O sold 25 million Hula Hoops, but it had to spend all spring introducing them on playgrounds around the country. In 1976, an ad man named Gary Dahl sold 1.5 million pet rocks, but that took six months.

"This fad was related to a war that was going to be so short that it would be difficult for a Target or a Kmart to buy the product and get it into 2,000 stores before the war was over," said Dan Head, the vice president for e-commerce at SportsLine, which sold the GreatUSA cards on its site and by e-mail.

The Iraqi card frenzy shows the dark side of e-mail marketing as well. During the peak period, countless e-mail accounts were getting a dozen offers a day for the decks. Much of that was spam — mail sent to people who had not asked to get e-mail marketing.

Indeed, Brightmail, a company that blocks spam for Microsoft's Hotmail, EarthLink and others, has identified 73 different variations of the Iraqi card pitch from various companies and has caught 26.5 million individual Iraqi card messages that it defines as spam.

After the e-mail blizzard reached full force, Mr. Brandenberg sent a scolding e-mail message to all of GreatUSA's sales agents. It reminded them to send solicitations only to people who agreed to be on marketing lists.

"I compared it to kindergarten," Mr. Brandenberg said. "We are all having a great time, so don't ruin it for the entire class." Such entreaties were not enough, though, and he cut off several affiliates for egregious spamming, he said.

The power of e-mail marketing today — and the reason that spam is so hard to control — is that the marketing is not centralized, but conducted by a complex web of product makers, mailing list owners, marketers and brokers, all of whom are disseminating the sales pitch.

For example, one of the first companies that Mr. Brandenberg contacted was AzoogleAds in Toronto. GreatUSA agreed to pay AzoogleAds 30 percent of any order it could generate for the cards. AzoogleAds, in turn, took the design for GreatUSA's e-mail offer and placed it on a Web site available to 700 independent companies that are its affiliates. Any of them could download the e-mail message and send it to mailing lists they controlled. They could also place banner ads selling the cards on their Web sites. AzoogleAds promised to pay these affiliates $6 for each order received, figuring that the average order would be for several decks.

One of those affiliates was Abacus Enterprises, which Laura Belzer runs from her home outside San Francisco. Ms. Belzer quickly relayed the Iraqi card promotion to a partner who has a list of 25 million e-mail names, mostly users of Hotmail. She agreed to split the commission from AzoogleAds with him.

As it turned out, the Iraqi cards proved an amazing success for them. Of the 25 million messages sent, they received 3,164 orders — a response rate of just over one-hundredth of 1 percent. That would be tiny for a marketing campaign done by regular postal mailing, but it is four times what Ms. Belzer receives promoting other products like printer ink by e-mail.

The financial results were even better. On the best days, the cards generated commissions of $5,000 to $6,000 for every one million e-mail messages sent. The printer ink promotions generate only $500 to $1,200 per million messages. Since her costs are quite low, Ms. Belzer says she can make a profit on only $200 in sales for each one million e-mail messages sent.

The flood of response to the Iraqi cards offer brought its own tensions. While JDR was gleefully orchestrating the sale of tens of thousands of decks a day, panic was rising at Lionstone, the half of the partnership that was supposed to secure the cards and handle the customer service and shipping.

Lionstone is primarily a liquor importer with 100 employees that runs Beer Across America, a sort of brew-of-the-month club, and other mail-order services for wine, cigars and coffee. JDR is a nine-person e-mail marketing company that has helped Lionstone sell wine clubs online.

Both had been looking for new markets, and in March, they formed what they thought would be a small venture to sell patriotic goods at GreatUSAflags.com. The Web site opened for business on April 10, the day before General Brooks announced the Iraqi card deck.

Once the general made his announcement, Louis Amoroso, a partner in Lionstone, started searching the Internet for companies that make playing cards. By Sunday morning, April 13, he had reached Mohammed Kamal, the owner of Liberty Playing Cards, a small Texas company that was already preparing to print replicas of the Iraqi deck. That company had already started selling the cards on eBay and on its own Web site.

But the arrangement ran into trouble right away. When the Defense Department created its deck, it used the image of a joker from a deck of Hoyle brand cards, a trademark of the United States Playing Card Company, the largest card maker in the United States. That company spent much of the first week after the Defense Department announcement sending "cease and desist" letters to anyone printing cards with its joker image. At the same time, it was trying to figure out whether or how to get into the Iraqi cards business itself.

By Thursday, April 17, Mr. Amoroso was frantic that he had sold 200,000 decks he might not be able to deliver. And new orders were coming in at a pace of 40 a minute, and dozens of competitors were appearing. He finally reached executives of United States Playing Card in their 100-year-old factory in Cincinnati. By this point, he needed 500,000 decks. The card company was wary of selling them to a company it did not know. Mr. Amoroso sealed the deal by wiring the card maker a hastily borrowed $500,000 that afternoon. In return, he got exclusive rights to use the official joker in the Iraqi deck.

It was not until the following week that two giant trucks pulled up to Lionstone's cement and brick building here. By then, employees were working round the clock, sleeping on cots, fielding customer calls and dealing with other issues. Nearly all of Lionstone's 100 employees, plus another 80 temporary workers, spent that weekend putting decks of cards into envelopes.

Things have calmed down in recent weeks. GreatUSA's Internet orders are down to only 2,000 a day. But it has also sold 750,000 decks to retail stores like Walgreen's. Its other online merchandise is doing well. It has sold 25,000 red, white and blue plastic foam car antenna balls.

Now the company will see whether its list of 400,000 customers who brought Iraqi cards can be enticed to buy other products. Soon an e-mail offer of boxer shorts with flags on them will be sent to those customers just in time for Fathers' Day.

AKE FOREST, Ill., June 4 — As he tapped out an e-mail message early one Monday morning in April, Zac Brandenberg had no idea the kind of success he would achieve. At 2:30 a.m. he pushed a button on his keyboard, sending two million copies of the message scampering across the Internet imploring their recipients to "Get the `Iraqi Most Wanted' Deck of Cards!"

The Friday before, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks had announced that the Defense Intelligence Agency had created a deck of playing cards with the names and photos of 55 Iraqi leaders for distribution to border guards. The Defense Department put the images of the cards on its Web site, spurring Mr. Brandenberg's company, JDR Media, and many others to race to get reproductions of the cards to market.

By 2:35 a.m., the first order came back for four decks at $5.95 each. "At that point, I knew we would be successful and I went to bed," Mr. Brandenberg said.

Hundreds of millions of e-mail messages about the cards have been sent since, and some 1.5 million decks have been sold by GreatUSAflags.com, a Web site owned by JDR, based in Los Angeles, and its partner, Lionstone International, which is based here. Other companies have sold a total of more than one million decks, making the Iraqi cards one of the fastest-selling fad products in history.

Just as the Iraqi war showed off the power and speed of America's high-tech weapons, the marketing of the Iraqi cards showed the ability of the Internet and e-mail to promote a product with overwhelming force.

Once it was clear that the product would sell, Mr. Brandenberg dashed off e-mail messages to his contacts at other Internet marketing companies. They, in turn, brought in more affiliates.

In total, some 1,500 separate companies sold GreatUSA's cards online. Some were better-known companies, like SportsLine .com, and others were tiny operations, like WeLoveTheIraqiInformationMinister .com, an impromptu that was site set up to chronicle the improbable bravado of former Iraqi Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf. Since GreatUSA paid these companies only if they made sales, it had enormous reach with almost no marketing expenditure.

"It is mind-blowing, when you sit back and think that in the course of the month you could sell one million decks of cards without planning to do so," said Edward Jack, a partner in Lionstone. "Without e-mail, this would never have happened."

The Iraqi cards certainly were not the biggest fad to hit the country, but they may well have been the fastest. In the summer of 1957, Wham-O sold 25 million Hula Hoops, but it had to spend all spring introducing them on playgrounds around the country. In 1976, an ad man named Gary Dahl sold 1.5 million pet rocks, but that took six months.

"This fad was related to a war that was going to be so short that it would be difficult for a Target or a Kmart to buy the product and get it into 2,000 stores before the war was over," said Dan Head, the vice president for e-commerce at SportsLine, which sold the GreatUSA cards on its site and by e-mail.

The Iraqi card frenzy shows the dark side of e-mail marketing as well. During the peak period, countless e-mail accounts were getting a dozen offers a day for the decks. Much of that was spam — mail sent to people who had not asked to get e-mail marketing.

Indeed, Brightmail, a company that blocks spam for Microsoft's Hotmail, EarthLink and others, has identified 73 different variations of the Iraqi card pitch from various companies and has caught 26.5 million individual Iraqi card messages that it defines as spam.

After the e-mail blizzard reached full force, Mr. Brandenberg sent a scolding e-mail message to all of GreatUSA's sales agents. It reminded them to send solicitations only to people who agreed to be on marketing lists.

"I compared it to kindergarten," Mr. Brandenberg said. "We are all having a great time, so don't ruin it for the entire class." Such entreaties were not enough, though, and he cut off several affiliates for egregious spamming, he said.

The power of e-mail marketing today — and the reason that spam is so hard to control — is that the marketing is not centralized, but conducted by a complex web of product makers, mailing list owners, marketers and brokers, all of whom are disseminating the sales pitch.

For example, one of the first companies that Mr. Brandenberg contacted was AzoogleAds in Toronto. GreatUSA agreed to pay AzoogleAds 30 percent of any order it could generate for the cards. AzoogleAds, in turn, took the design for GreatUSA's e-mail offer and placed it on a Web site available to 700 independent companies that are its affiliates. Any of them could download the e-mail message and send it to mailing lists they controlled. They could also place banner ads selling the cards on their Web sites. AzoogleAds promised to pay these affiliates $6 for each order received, figuring that the average order would be for several decks.

One of those affiliates was Abacus Enterprises, which Laura Belzer runs from her home outside San Francisco. Ms. Belzer quickly relayed the Iraqi card promotion to a partner who has a list of 25 million e-mail names, mostly users of Hotmail. She agreed to split the commission from AzoogleAds with him.

As it turned out, the Iraqi cards proved an amazing success for them. Of the 25 million messages sent, they received 3,164 orders — a response rate of just over one-hundredth of 1 percent. That would be tiny for a marketing campaign done by regular postal mailing, but it is four times what Ms. Belzer receives promoting other products like printer ink by e-mail.

The financial results were even better. On the best days, the cards generated commissions of $5,000 to $6,000 for every one million e-mail messages sent. The printer ink promotions generate only $500 to $1,200 per million messages. Since her costs are quite low, Ms. Belzer says she can make a profit on only $200 in sales for each one million e-mail messages sent.

The flood of response to the Iraqi cards offer brought its own tensions. While JDR was gleefully orchestrating the sale of tens of thousands of decks a day, panic was rising at Lionstone, the half of the partnership that was supposed to secure the cards and handle the customer service and shipping.

Lionstone is primarily a liquor importer with 100 employees that runs Beer Across America, a sort of brew-of-the-month club, and other mail-order services for wine, cigars and coffee. JDR is a nine-person e-mail marketing company that has helped Lionstone sell wine clubs online.

Both had been looking for new markets, and in March, they formed what they thought would be a small venture to sell patriotic goods at GreatUSAflags.com. The Web site opened for business on April 10, the day before General Brooks announced the Iraqi card deck.

Once the general made his announcement, Louis Amoroso, a partner in Lionstone, started searching the Internet for companies that make playing cards. By Sunday morning, April 13, he had reached Mohammed Kamal, the owner of Liberty Playing Cards, a small Texas company that was already preparing to print replicas of the Iraqi deck. That company had already started selling the cards on eBay and on its own Web site.

But the arrangement ran into trouble right away. When the Defense Department created its deck, it used the image of a joker from a deck of Hoyle brand cards, a trademark of the United States Playing Card Company, the largest card maker in the United States. That company spent much of the first week after the Defense Department announcement sending "cease and desist" letters to anyone printing cards with its joker image. At the same time, it was trying to figure out whether or how to get into the Iraqi cards business itself.

By Thursday, April 17, Mr. Amoroso was frantic that he had sold 200,000 decks he might not be able to deliver. And new orders were coming in at a pace of 40 a minute, and dozens of competitors were appearing. He finally reached executives of United States Playing Card in their 100-year-old factory in Cincinnati. By this point, he needed 500,000 decks. The card company was wary of selling them to a company it did not know. Mr. Amoroso sealed the deal by wiring the card maker a hastily borrowed $500,000 that afternoon. In return, he got exclusive rights to use the official joker in the Iraqi deck.

It was not until the following week that two giant trucks pulled up to Lionstone's cement and brick building here. By then, employees were working round the clock, sleeping on cots, fielding customer calls and dealing with other issues. Nearly all of Lionstone's 100 employees, plus another 80 temporary workers, spent that weekend putting decks of cards into envelopes.

Things have calmed down in recent weeks. GreatUSA's Internet orders are down to only 2,000 a day. But it has also sold 750,000 decks to retail stores like Walgreen's. Its other online merchandise is doing well. It has sold 25,000 red, white and blue plastic foam car antenna balls.

Now the company will see whether its list of 400,000 customers who brought Iraqi cards can be enticed to buy other products. Soon an e-mail offer of boxer shorts with flags on them will be sent to those customers just in time for Fathers' Day.